"The Chief Minister and Minister for Home Affairs have emerged from this saga with no disciplinary case, no Chief Officer, a pending report from a QC likely to be critical of the Island’s Government, and a bill for over a million pounds. They are not well placed to criticise the actions of others" Deputy Bob Hill.............................................
Trevor Pitmans Blog.......................................BALDTRUTH"

Sir Geoffrey talks amongst other things about his time in Jersey and the role of the Jurat.

"Jersey has a rather different system for trials where two Jurats – the Island’s most senior elected officials – sit with the judge. The Jurats are effectively professional jurors (even if more or less unpaid) who will have read the papers in advance – in the case we were dealing there were 12 lever arch files. The judge deals with procedure and directs the Jurats publicly about the law but then has to retire with the Jurats while they consider their verdict. But the judge has no part to play in the determination of any factual issue unless the two Jurats are ‘split’ on their decision(s)."

"Another part time judge working there told me that retiring with the Jurats gave you an opportunity to ‘help’ them with their decision – i.e. to indicate what they should decide despite their independence."

‘Unfair’ judge costs millions

Friday 6th November 2009, 3:00PM GMT.

THE extraordinary failings of a Royal Court judge are likely to have cost taxpayers several million pounds.

Commissioner Sir Geoffrey Nice has been strongly criticised by the Privy Council for his unfair handling of the trial of St Helier-based accountant Peter Michel.

Mr Michel was jailed in 2007 for six years after being convicted of ten counts of money laundering. It was alleged that he used his financial expertise to launder the cash for criminals.

However, the council – the most senior court that Islanders can appeal to – this week quashed the conviction against him in a judgment which said that Sir Geoffrey had been snide and sarcastic and that he his actions had rendered the trial unfair.

‘No one has found it possible to defend the Commissioner’s conduct of this trial,’ the council concluded.

My lectures to date have been about perpetrators of crimes in war, international war crimes tribunals, their lawyers and judges.

This lecture is about regulation as it operates for lawyers, especially barristers, and judges and viewed from different angles but allowing questions or conclusions at the end. Personal experiences will, I hope, bring some of the problems to life.

HOW THE LAW HAS CHANGED

Before doing that, however, I should acknowledge that the legal system when I started did feel different from how it seems today. A masculine profession with many who had served in the war, robust, red blooded, sexist often enough and racist with some real shockers of judges on the bench along with very many very decent judges.

The shockers might enjoy destroying counsel for sport or, more commonly, controlling a jury to be sure the defendant was convicted – ‘potted ‘ had always been the word, by the way. In criminal courts there could be the sense that the judge and the prosecution were on the same side.

I have sat as a part time judge for nearly 30 years in various capacities and felt it change. All judges go to residential training courses every year, now. And yet within the last 20 years at one such course a recently retired Lord Chief justice repeated someone else’s joke about a fictional rapist at Oxford or Cambridge in a mock sentencing exercise being given not five or six years but a ‘blue’. I don’t think he understood quite how the world had changed. But then one of his predecessors within my lifetime had written a report into Bloody Sunday that could generously be described as a Greywash favourable to the army and adverse to the IRA that it took decades and millions of pounds to put right and that led, so some would say, with increased in terrorist recruitment and violence. What would we say of a legal system with such a history south of the Sahara? In truth the system was OK – it was far from perfect.

Legal systems – even the best in the world – need time like large ships to change course and these bad things may now be largely of the past, and for a few reasons.

Selection, as well as training, of judges has become much more professional and systematic and – for the most part – judges with inappropriate views should be eliminated at detailed interviews by interviewing panels of lay and legal members. And there are many underemployed barristers and solicitors for those panels to choose from these days.

Second, some at least of the motivation for getting defendants ‘potted’ was a belief that some procedures and some law benefitted those who were, or may have been, guilty but who got acquitted under the proof beyond reasonable doubt rule by reason of a ‘technicality’. Over time many of these procedures and laws have been abolished, as a matter of policy, and there may be less sense of the legal system being loaded in favour of the guilty than once there was.

For example: the seven peremptory challenges each defendant had to jurors from the panel meant that in the 1970 Mangrove 9 trial involving racial allegations against police, 63 challenges were available to ensure the jury had two black jurors – the right to challenge jurors was progressively whittled away and finally abolished altogether. The right to silence when interviewed under caution and in a trial has been reduced to almost nothing as comments can be made about exercising the right in either setting. Corroboration required in cases involving sex and cases where children were witnesses has been abolished.

Third, perhaps, jurors have become less in awe of courts and more willing to ask questions. Although judges are trained to discourage too many jury questions it may be one feature among many that makes judges actually more and more happy to leave verdicts fairly to jurors. It is a long time since I recall any judge bemoaning a jury’s decision (until the surprising outburst from the bench in the Vicky Price trial).

As long as these changes were under way and the profession was growing in size much regulation and control of behaviour remained informal. Let me explain how it operated, first with regulation of a judge.

When a fairly junior barrister I was in Huntingdon to defend a professional burglar who was going to plead guilty and for whom I was to mitigate. Huntington Crown Court then sat in the charming old Guildhall, a muddled building, dark and full of Cromwell’s past. Waiting for the trial to start, standing in one of the few available spaces I was aware of two large men standing outside the door that led to the judge’s private room. One of them approached me asking if I was representing – let us call him – Burglar Bill. ‘Well yes’, I replied. ‘Now look, sir,’ said the mountainous suited man with the London accent ‘ you know how sometimes a barrister starts a mitigation saying’ there’s no way I can stop this man going to prison’ – ‘Yes’ I acknowledged. ‘Well it would be embarrassing was (sic) you to say that when you start mitigation for Bill’ – at which point the two men – who I had come to assume were up from what is called the ‘Met.’ (and not the N Y opera) entered the judge’s private area. Prosecution counsel opened the case at the baize covered table that in those funny old courts often was where we sat and I did the best I could to mitigate. The judge retired – a very nice, gentle man, an academic from Cambridge sitting as a part time judge at Huntingdon in line with a long standing tradition; but not immensely experienced. Prosecution counsel – who was effectively the local attorney general for the county – confidently predicted four/five years and even bet on it. Inexperienced as I was I bet 50p on a suspended sentence. Which is what the defendant got even if I did not get my 50p. What should I now do? The judge had clearly been approached privately and improperly by met’ police officers; Bill was presumably an informer and a private deal had been done. Such things were not unknown and later they were to become the subject of strict control. But then? My chap having a benefit that could not be denied him (his sentence would not be increased) I spoke to my head of chambers, a very senior QC. He spoke to the presiding judge of the circuit and the very nice academic was told that what he done was a bit unwise. No doubt he never did it again.

Was anyone harmed by an approach that would now be unacceptable? I doubt it. Did the informal method work? I think so. Where there was good will and one member of the legal fraternity – in this case a judge – got something wrong unwittingly there was no need for rules, regulations, pages of complaint forms or whatever might now be expected.

More commonly, of course, advice went the other way from a judge through a head of chambers to a barrister – in the nature of things other barristers would not hear about such things.

That old fashioned Bar that was passing can be seen in echo or reprise in outposts of empire, or rather nearer, in Jersey where I was a part time judge a few years ago. What I experienced showed several things about regulation of lawyers.

Jersey has a rather different system for trials where two Jurats – the Island’s most senior elected officials – sit with the judge. The Jurats are effectively professional jurors (even if more or less unpaid) who will have read the papers in advance – in the case we were dealing there were 12 lever arch files. The judge deals with procedure and directs the Jurats publicly about the law but then has to retire with the Jurats while they consider their verdict. But the judge has no part to play in the determination of any factual issue unless the two Jurats are ‘split’ on their decision(s).

Another part time judge working there told me that retiring with the Jurats gave you an opportunity to ‘help’ them with their decision – i.e. to indicate what they should decide despite their independence. I had already started to wonder how, when it came time for me to retire with my Jurats, I could avoid the situation - the temptation described – where I would be drawn into the factual decision making process and verdict; but apparently I was not allowed to leave them alone much (although in fact I did, to ensure they could discuss the case absolutely freely). I devised a scheme – no doubt little liked by counsel as it involved additional work and maybe especially disliked by the prosecution were they to have assumed that ‘good’ judges ‘helped’ the Jurats – where for each of the many allegations on the indictment a chart should be prepared by the advocates. Most criminal offences have two constituent elements: what was proved to be done (actus reus); what was the proved state of mind / intent of the accused at the time (mens rea). Advocates on each side set out on the chart their half dozen, or so, best points of argument. They were asked to do this in addition to the oral and written closing arguments they presented. If, in deliberation, it became clear that the Jurats were stuck on any count in the indictment and minded to turn to me for guidance I could reflect their independence and my genuine disengagement from their factual decision making by inviting them simply to remind themselves of the route to decision that each side had proposed.

I cannot tell you what happened in the retiring room; I can say, on the basis of my experience, that this was a scheme I would unhesitatingly recommend for any similar trial and am sure it can work very well indeed.

And this – of course – tells us something else about regulation, this time regulation of a judge and Jurats but of general application. Systems can easily deflect well-intentioned people subject to temptation from taking a wrong step. It is not at all different – extremely similar in fact – to the practice with summings up to juries in England and Wales where judges are expected to refer to, and to use or adapt, standard approved forms of words for particular offences or particular modes of liability. Judges are, in addition, encouraged in all but the simplest of cases to provide a jury with directions that constitute a logical route to verdict, one way or another. These devices have, of course, rendered it harder for any judge to ‘pot’ a defendant by a slanted summing up and encouraged him or her to do his own job, not the jury’s.

BACK TO JERSEY

Before turning to what we can learn from overseas courts I must return to the Jersey case, but for a different reason that throws light on regulation, but from an unusual point of view.

The Jersey case lasted several weeks and ran smoothly enough. If you read the transcript you may be forgiven for thinking that were several issues that the court – the two Jurats and I – needed dealing with in evidence and that many relevant issues were not being dealt with on either side so far as the main defendant – an accountant - was concerned. There was no complaint of my conduct of the case in a very intimate court where had there been cause for concern you would have expected it to be raised formally or informally (and there were English Counsel there sitting beside the Jersey Advocates, the only ones allowed to speak) The main defendant was convicted – his co-accused office manager, a woman, was acquitted. By the Jurats, of course.

In the court of appeal – unknown to me – complaint was made about the number of questions I had asked and the tone or manner of my asking them. Sarcastic and all sorts of other things were alleged. The court of appeal – that sits in jersey and included one of those senior judges of the island who probably knew the Accused’s counsel and with whom I spoke on a daily basis throughout the trial – had nothing to say about the allegations of offensive manner but said I had asked too many questions. They dismissed the appeal nevertheless. Questions by me were for the reasons given - namely the failure to address obvious issues by counsel - and were asked on my behalf and on behalf of my two colleague Jurats.

The Second stage of appeal was to the Privy Council composed of the country’s most senior Supreme Court judges – Lord Philips, Lord Neuberger, Lord Brown and Baroness Hale. They were addressed by two advocates neither of whom had been in the trial court, one of whom was the attorney general of the island [for the prosecution] . The allegation of offensive tone was revived and – probably – enhanced by advocates who were probably known personally to the judges of the court – none of those judges knew me.

I cannot know what precisely was said because the Privy Council declined to provide me with a transcript or a tape recording.

In its judgment – published in a newspaper without warning – I was condemned as the worst known form of judge and the appeal allowed. The Judgment – in the pen of Lord Brown – was so fashioned as to destroy the judge – me – and could so easily have led to tragedy. I chose a different course and wrote to the court stating that they were completely wrong.

I was told that the judge affected – me – had no part to play, that they acted on submissions and had nothing to say.

I wrote again setting out in detail the many obvious points that should have alerted them to reasons why they should have been more cautious about what they were being told. Again I was told to go away as procedurally there was nothing they were able or willing to do.

And there was nothing I could do – for a time. The Defendant had to be left to have his retrial and any further correspondence or efforts by me to understand what had gone so completely wrong could harm his interest. Eventually I discovered that he had pleaded guilty at his retrial and would not be in front of the Privy Council again. I wrote to the only person who might be able to offer a detached view. Counsel for the co-accused. She - woman who had been an academic in Ireland and England before a couple of decades as an advocate in the courts of Jersey, appearing in one court or other pretty well every day of the week, had represented her client with industry, always prepared, always asking pertinent questions and being able to answer the questions asked of her by the court. Apart from seeing her in court I had no knowledge of her. She wrote back, clearly relieved at being approached. The case as described in the Privy Council judgment was unrecognisable as the case she had sat through. The judgment was a character assassination. She said quite a lot that could explain how it was that the Jurats and I had been left to ask questions that could / should have been asked by counsel for the other parties. She explained that I had conducted the hearings with absolute courtesy from first to last. She was happy for her letter to go to the Privy Council – at obvious risk to her own career - and indeed to speak to them if asked. They never asked although they did receive the letter.

To which the reply was much as before save that they acknowledged her view of the proceedings was much as mine. They did not acknowledge the possibility of error or identify a mechanism for putting error right.

I was able to circulate her letter to lawyers and judges known to me. Some of them in very senior positions were concerned and wrote to the Privy Council. After a long time they received an answer that procedures could not change but that if she [Miss Fogarty, the defence advocate] was right, they were wrong. The nearest they ever got to an acknowledgement of fallibility. Two of the senior lawyers then wrote an article published in the Times that corrected the history.

I wrote once more setting out all the manifest errors revealed in the process to date and suggesting steps that might be taken including referring the whole unhappy history for review to the Ministry of Justice. Lord Philips eventually replied saying that he had consulted the other top judges in Scotland and N Ireland who - perhaps unsurprisingly - did not think the finality of judgment of such courts as theirs should be subject to review.

I have no doubt where the truth lies and there are many very obvious arguments about substance and procedure that can be advanced in criticism of the Privy Council’s conduct; they are set out in some detail in the correspondence that I will publish. But the two most obvious are first that the Privy Council was prepared to leave unresolved a possible injustice without checking on the evidence available to them – Miss Fogarty whom they had no reason to doubt or the tapes that they did not listen to! Second, the Privy Council – just as the Supreme Court composed of the same judges for the most part – is infallible and beyond regulation of any kind.

Is this important apart from to me and to other judges consigned to outer darkness by incorrect judgments of this kind? Well yes.

Supreme Courts are very important places for their citizens – ours typically deals with vital issues of life, death, health, liberty of the subject and so on.

With politicians unable to deal with some critical issues – in particular the ever widening gap in wealth – such top courts around the world may find themselves becoming even more important if and when they are asked to deal with separation of citizens by wealth in the way the American courts dealt with separation of citizens by colour. They need to be properly equipped for a modern age.

They cannot expect to sit at the top of a machine that is subject to review and regulation in various ways without being in any way themselves exposed. Lower level judges are regulated – required to train, susceptible to review by higher courts as I was - but unsatisfactorily.

SUPREME AUTHORITY – SUPREME FALLIBILITY

To have them exempt is extraordinary, especially when they recognise their shortcomings in at least two ways. Baroness Hale, one of the judges said of the Supreme Court (effectively the same for these purposes): ‘We are not final because we are right – we are right because we are final’ – i.e. they may make errors but those errors cannot be corrected. She also said in a recent interview that judges who have risen through the Bar, the Temples and other parts of the “establishment” are not always ideally placed to cast judgment on the complexities of modern life, observing that “If the life-blood of the law is experience and common sense, then whose experience and common sense are we talking about? “Surely it cannot only be the experience and common sense of the judges, many of whom have led such sheltered lives? In my case application of common sense would clearly have alerted the court as a minimum to their being at risk of being unfair.

And, in another case concerning Jersey the Privy Council itself observed that the written transcript of a trial - the only actual evidence to which the Council turned - is not necessarily something to be relied on.

Well, the Supreme Court is regulated to the extent that judges have to apply – they are no longer just ‘tapped on the shoulder’ (Although I have heard that making a written application to be promoted meant, for one court of appeal judge, writing a letter saying ‘I am available’ – old presumptions probably do die hard).

HOW TO REGULATE THE INFALLIBLE

There seem to me several steps that could be taken to avoid my particular misfortune happening to others: First, just as Lord Sumption was recently promoted straight from the ranks of the Bar to the Supreme Court the Appointments Committee should encourage more applicants from barristers and solicitors of diverse backgrounds (Baroness Hale is the only woman on the Supreme Court that includes no one from an ethnic minority) especially those with more radical approaches to the law. The committee – at least the lay members of it - would probably be both astonished and delighted to find, say, a high street solicitor – especially if with a non-white non-Anglo Saxon background – having the qualifications to sit as Supreme Court judge bringing common sense and an entirely different perspective to the major legal issues of the day. Another way to secure some form of control on the over homogeneous bench might be to have lay assessors – not unlike jurors – sitting with them. Selection would be difficult and, of course, they would not be able to ask questions directly or to be involved in the writing of the legal judgment – but the lay view with an ability to prod the Justices into asking questions not asked by counsel could be invaluable for justice – after all, the people who have dared to challenge the establishment view and speak to me about the case concerning me have commented: Why weren’t you asked? Why weren’t the tapes listened to? Why wasn’t Miss Fogarty approached? Obvious enough to most lawyers, schoolteachers, university lecturers etc – but not to our legal leaders in chief.

INTERNATIONAL COURTS

Enough. But as I turn to the new international criminal courts we may see all these problems appearing, but in different settings.

International Criminal Courts all have infallible courts but as the top of only two tiers except for the ICJ that has a single unreviewable court of 15 judges.

The single top level courts of the Yugoslav, Rwanda, Sierra Leone etc tribunals are not subject to review on fact or law. Thus if one court renders a decision in law moderating a test of criminal liability – as was thought to happen recently on the issue of aiding an abetting and / or defence of superior orders - the other courts are free to disagree. What should the soldier do who wishes to act within the law?

And what if a top tier court makes a decision in law because of local political pressure? Should the rest of the world’s jurisprudence be affected by the local interest?

But other perhaps greater problems exist that may need regulation. These courts are staffed on the basis of ‘geographical spread’, as the UN describes it. No two judges from the same country. Lawyers and other staff all selected to ensure as many countries as possible have their nationals engaged at the court. On the bench, judges sit in threes, fours or fives having no shared background and often no common first language. There have been many rumours of benches of judges being barely on speaking terms one with another - hardly surprising.

Many – most – lawyers will have re-located often with families from thousands of miles away. What is their response if, as happens, they are asked or pressed to do something improper or ethically wrong by their office? How would their experience compare to what happens in jurisdictions that have only independent sole practitioner - ‘hired-gun’ - advocates, as used to be the case here? The Independent lawyer may be tempted, even sorely tempted, to yield but knows that if he does he risks his one saleable item – his reputation – if caught out. And provided he is not living at the limit of extravagantly high fees, and has a reasonable flow of other possible work, he can walk away from temptation and turn to the next job.

For the employed lawyer – probably in any office not just in institutions like the UN – different considerations apply. If pressure is applied through the boss then the lawyer resists at his peril and his family’s peril: job, promotion, children in school, return to whence they came if internationally relocated but with no guarantee of a job to return to. It may not be that surprising that when ethical issues cropped up at the ICTY the hired-gun advocates from common law jurisdictions were more comfortable challenging the management - even at personal risk and suffering sanctions - than those from other backgrounds. But then we, in theory, could walk away to other work. Let me tell you about the worst such problem I faced.

Seven days from the end of the prosecution’s case in the Milosevic trial it became clear that the presiding judge, Sir Richard May from England had a serious medical problem. He was persuaded to go to the doctor and it was confirmed how ill he was. Indeed, very sadly, he died shortly after.

The ICTY’s rules allowed a panel of three judges to sit with one member absent for up to five days if but only if his absence was likely to be of short duration; otherwise the hearings had to stop forthwith.

All three supposedly independent parts of the Tribunal – Judges, Prosecution, Registry – thought it would be a good idea to close the prosecution case by squeezing seven days evidence into five without alerting Milosevic to the gravity of Judge May’s illness or, thus, to the illegality of the proceedings before only two judges. We all knew there was no possibility of his condition fitting in the ‘short duration’ category and the hearings simply had to stop. But it was thought a PR coup to get to the end of the prosecution case. Silly. Another judge would have to read into the case – as Judge Lord Bonomy from Scotland later did, and admirably – and it would have been better for him to hear the last 7 days of prosecution evidence

In fact the plan went further: there were to be written submissions made by the Amici Curiae on Milosevic’s behalf about the sufficiency of some counts in the indictment after the close of the prosecution case and it was thought they could be completed before the judge’s actual state was revealed. Astonishing. Ironically, had Milosevic been informed that the hearing might have to stop he would probably have said he could not care less and the court could carry on with two judges and some member of the animal kingdom, such was his respect for the court.

I had no choice but to say that was plan was wrong. I was subject to extreme pressure, not just from the Prosecutor’s office, to shut up. I declined. I was advised by another UK lawyer there to do what I knew was appropriate, namely to contact my own professional body’s ethics body for a ruling. Unsurprisingly I was told by that body that I had to get off the case unless I could put things right. There was nowhere in the UN to turn to for assistance. There is no effective code of conduct for prosecuting lawyers. I contacted the FCO’s top lawyer who had been much involved in these tribunals and whose predecessor had pressed me to take up a post there. I found him in Arusha and explained what was happening asking him somehow to persuade the court to behave in accordance with its own rules. ‘You’re on your own’ I was told. Senior lawyers in the Prosecutor’s office were asked for written opinions. The majority were clear as they dared be in saying that what was planned was contrary to the rules and had to stop. The overly ambitious may have supported the plan! There was a meeting of all lawyers. I was told that to seek advice from my professional body was blackmail – not a term I welcomed. I explained that I had no choice but to take particularly robust action to compel the Tribunal to act in accordance with the law and left the room. No other lawyer had the courage to follow me. They stayed – they said – to temporise.

From then on – although it was not possible to remove me from the case - much though that was contemplated and tried – I was detested for having put the law above short term exigency. Such is the reality of working in frontier legal systems that are neither accountable nor regulated. The lessons from this account are obvious – but let me deal with them in this second and concluding stock-take:

CONCLUSIONS

Regulation – like law itself – is about getting people to behave well – to be ‘good’.

It is never easy to know who or what is good but most have within us a personal sense of goodness from which we should not be separated. Clever law - and clever regulation - activates that sense of goodness to achieve what society wants, but not necessarily simply by having a law or a rule book. Rules are, after all, to be broken.

It may be worth thinking of the way we regulate human interaction – and professional advice or representation is a human interaction – as an arc. At one end the limited instances where there is almost no regulation of behaviour beyond what a nation’s laws provides – queuing for buses, swimming in the sea, perhaps playing games in a park – circumstances where we feel we can trust each other. At the other end the fiercest of regulation, and I do not have in mind laws about murder or rape or crimes against humanity. More interesting are drink drive laws. For decades we have known how dangerous it is to drive drunk. Laws have been introduced, sometimes quite tough even on the almost blameless. We may now kid ourselves that a cultural shift has happened and that our children - and even we - would not drive drunk. Wrong. Take the laws away tomorrow and we would return to the dangerous fool’s confidence of driving with 2/3 pints of beer or half a bottle of wine swilling around our insides. The law has to be fierce not just because of the damage caused by the drunk driving but because the citizen needs to be deterred from falling to irresistible temptation likely to be experienced by many.

It works - but it manifests distrust in ourselves and is probably never the best form of regulation. You can see a very similar type of extreme regulation for barristers and solicitors - and all professionals - with continuing professional development (CPD). We all know we should keep up with developments in the learning of our chosen profession but we also know that without a rigid regime we would fall to the temptation of putting off this year’s CPD to next year or the year after. The ‘offence’ is comparatively slight; fierce regulation is required because we cannot rely on internal goodness driving the individual to do what is wanted. It is an example of enforcing recognition of the rule book, like it or not. On issues more central to a professional’s conduct rule book regulation may be ineffective and less fierce regulation will be in everyone’s interests.

Note that in the examples I gave no-one, except possibly the innocent judge letting the police officers into his room, needed better acquaintance with a rule book. Those who behaved wrongly knew what they were doing was wrong. The judges in international courts breaking court rules for political purpose knew what they were doing was wrong; just like the barrister who failed to hand over the exculpatory statement. Reading the rule book to them would achieve little or nothing.

Similarly with international advocates facing political or other improper pressures to break the rules in an institutional setting where yielding to pressures would serve the institution. Just like the pressures some barristers will inevitably experience when the new Alternative Business Structures (ABS) allow them to ‘incorporate’ like solicitors and to face the very different pressures of solicitors offices or international institutions.

Something else is required for the public interest and to ensure the Bar – for that is the focus of my interest – will want to comply with rules.

We have, I reckon, a perfect example of regulation not working from which to learn. Hundreds – probably over a thousand – parliamentarians had their expense claims examined. Apart from those caught and punished many, many others were very anxious. And why? The arc here starts with those confidently blameless because they made no claim or really only charged 2nd class rail tickets and cleaned their own moats. At the other end have been those knowing clearly that they were defrauding the public. But in the middle? Worried parliamentarians seeing their images tarnished because they acted when Bob Mellish MP suggested they add to their MPs salaries by expenses and thought it Ok – or did as advised by officials and thought it questionable, but went ahead with a goose house regardless. And all other shades of shame, embarrassment and guilt by which their profession was tarnished - and the country too.

Yet there was – from the beginning – a simple way of regulating this problem. If the day Bob Mellhuish said whatever he did it was announced, as practice, that all expenses claim forms would be publicly available (saving for details of addresses or ill health if turning up) no one would have been caught because no-one would have offended. The practice would either have frightened the claimants into good behaviour or played on their sense of goodness to persuade them to honour the public’s money – the precise mechanism doesn’t much matter. The outcome is what would have been required and our parliamentarians would have been enjoyed enhanced not reduced respect. I am not sure that the lessons available from this category of behavioural control are recognised in today’s regulatory world.

In the recent bulge of regulation with the super regulator supervising the other 8 lawyer’s regulatory boards that super regulator – the LSB – has I think made substantial errors as has the Bar.

First, the LSB has required Lay majority on all subordinate Boards – something completely inappropriate if you want a profession you can trust. Having a lay majority announces that the profession is not to be trusted.

Lay representation on all boards – and at the Inns and the Bar Council – would have been invaluable and would have saved the Bar from several of the problems it now faces, having looked inwards not outwards for so long. Lay members – invaluable on the BSB – bring external experience that challenges inbred preconceptions (perhaps over the importance or lack of importance of youth courts, as one example) Additionally the presence of lay members implies – or perhaps threatens – that the public more generally may know how the body concerned works – or doesn’t. Bad practice can no longer expect to be cloaked by forms of self interest.

Second, insufficient technical and cultural knowledge of the profession has allowed the LSB to embrace referral fees despite it being obvious that trading in cases – with a percentage for the trade – will increase the overall cost of obtaining legal advice and representation and inevitably limit the client’s true freedom of choice of the best advocate.

Third, failure to understand or appreciate the value of the ‘cab rank rule’ by which the client chooses the lawyer and the lawyer does not decline work s/he does not like if otherwise qualified to act. Often said to be honoured in the breach. Much more difficult to honour with ‘incorporated’ (ABS) structures that are coming but a principle of considerable significance and theoretical purity that is attractive both to the public and to lawyers. It is not for the lawyers to decide on cases – it is for juries and judges.

On the other hand, unhappily, the Bar has brought problems on itself that are now, many think, threatening its future as a separate profession. The immediate problem is quality assessment, something required by the Legal Standards Board (LSB) and nearly in place for lawyers doing criminal cases. Resisted by the Bar – including for good arguable reasons – it has in fact shown nervous hostility to the scheme from the start. Yet it should have appreciated for decades that the pubic would want lawyers – like doctors and teachers – to be checked for performance. Why should they be different? Would they ever have maintained the arrogance of being a profession apart had they had the advantages of lay members – say teachers, trade unionists and doctors as examples – sitting in on their deliberations.

Instead, I fear, much concentration has been on fees – of course understandable now that cuts have been made and drastic further cuts threatened.

But concentrating on fees year after year – as Bar associations have - but not being willing to publicise what barristers earn in at least general terms (bands perhaps) for the very highly paid has not encouraged trust. Lay representatives on the Bar Council who could have alerted them to their own insularity.

I have already spoke of the Inns that have no lay members on their governing bodies Not appreciating the opportunity in their grasp.

Not having open systems for appointment of their annual Treasurers. The consequence of which is that Barristers exist in a woefully out of date environment and can, perhaps, be forgiven for behaving as they have done.

FURTHER CONCLUDING REMARKS

The Bar has had a difficult few decades and may now seem less than happy. It lost its near monopoly of rights of audience, it saw Legal Aid work rise and fall in amount and in rates of pay; it has seen much of the work it used to do pass to institutions (like the CPS); it now finds itself obliged by the Legal Services Act to accommodate new systems of working that may never have been what the barrister when student contemplated.

It is hardly surprising that such a profession will be finding it difficult to identify a coherent single ethos to unite its members.

But that is what it wants, as does society. Practices / procedures of one type or another – actual or possible - that I have considered are probably what would return the Bar to its own control. Advancing voluntarily in step with the public’s expectations would always have been – and would now be – better for the profession and for society than imposition of rules that will tend to dilute any instinctive activation of the professional’s personal sense of good or worth.

Doing things publicly – assisted at all stages by openness in general and lay representation in particular – is more likely to reduce the burden of the rule book.

Being a barrister – any form of advocate – is to have the enormous privilege of representing another human being at a point of distress. It is a privilege shared with doctors and priests. It is a privilege that should reflect – by the conduct of the professionals and by the regulation to which the profession may have to be subject – that lawyers and judges work in the service of the citizen, not the other way round.

Monday, May 13, 2013

"Whether it’s tax avoidance or tax evasion is an issue of semantics and one for the lawyers to argue over. But for the Islanders who rely on Jersey’s finance industry for their way of life, both indirectly and directly, we need to have a long, hard think about how our current economy was formed and where it’s going."

"We are all enjoying the gravy train (and, honestly, I can’t thank you bankers enough) but it might be prudent for us just to be aware that there might come a time when money doesn’t grow on trees in Jersey any more."

As I mentioned in my previous posting the Editor & Deputy Editor of the Jersey Evening Post (JEP) are leaving office. Knowing that they are going are we starting to see a little more flexibility up at the JEP?

There are some very serious issues facing Jersey's economy. People need to start discussing these. Im pleased that Mr Cudlipp has taken the JEP's first peak at this.

Jersey 2014 and beyond.

Is there a plan B from our esteemed leaders? or will they be jumping ship when we finally reach the inevitable crossroads. How can Jersey diversify it's economy? - can it? Is it too late? We are reaching the end of a cycle but is anyone looking beyond tomorrow? I can not stress enough that we are heading for a very nasty crash unless something happens and happens soon. Im basing this mainly on my instinct and gut feeling. You can feel it. The high street is on it's knees - the construction industry is grinding to a halt - there are endless empty properties for sale and a stagnant secondary property market and Finance is shrinking - we could go on.

This is what I said in my last posting:

This is my first look at 2014 and beyond. I shared a very informative chat with a Deputy today. His political views are different to mine but yet we shared the same concerns about Jersey's future. I hope to be developing some of the issues we spoke about in later postings. Things must change. The JEP has its chance. I hope that someone from outside of Jersey is given the job. I hope they will come with integrity and ambition. A simple ambition of taking the JEP out of the mire it's been swimming in since 1890? Can this be achieved when it depends on advertising and the States of Jersey for survival? only time will tell.

The Frank Walker and Jon Averty influence has been immense on this so called 'NEWS' paper. Have they been pulling the strings of Shipley and Bright all this time?

Jersey has one newspaper. It has a duty to the people of Jersey. Being the only newspaper on the Island of Jersey must come with responsibility. I have heard that the Guernsey Post is not afraid of breaking the hard story.

Jersey 2014 and beyond

We must be open and honest. This is not about being Left - Right or somewhere in the middle. This is about three things coming together.

This is about the Moral, Social and Financial future of Jersey.

These three things must move forward hand in hand

I believe we are on a precipice. We can be blinkered if we like. The Jersey Media must step up like they have never done so before.

The Retirement of Bright and Shipley is the start.

It was very refreshing to read the below article by Ramsay Cudlipp. I hope this is the start. I hope that the JEP and their hacks are allowed to go out and start asking some questions. Questions to our esteemed leaders who have led us to this precipice.

Do we bury our head in the sand or do we look for a solution to an inevitable problem?

Rico Sorda Part Time Investigative Journalist

ARTICLE BY RAMSAY CUDLIPP FOR THE JEP

We’re dining at the tax avoidance restaurant

Sunday 12th May 2013, 3:00PM BST.

IMAGINE I’m in a posh restaurant.

I’ve enjoyed a nice bottle of wine, three courses of good food and generally made the most of the facilities. The bill arrives and it’s for £50. However, I choose not to pay it and instead take the waiter to one side. I offer him £30 cash if he can delete my meal from the system and let me leave out of the side door.

Now, in such a situation, would you say that I had avoided paying my bill or evaded paying it?

And does defining the difference really matter? At the end of the day, the restaurant is still out of pocket and still missing the £50 it should have been paid.
Whether people avoid or evade paying tax (and there is, as far as the law is concerned, apparently a huge difference) is an argument that seems to blur the issue when it comes to financial offshore centres.

This week Deputy Montfort Tadier and Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf have been at loggerheads, arguing over remarks made by the Deputy to a French newspaper which suggested that Jersey was costing the country millions in tax. Ignoring Senator Ozouf’s curious attempt to imply that Deputy Tadier was wrong to air an opinion of his own that did not tally with the official party line, I couldn’t help but notice that he also missed the entire point. It’s not just about whether our finance industry is legal – it’s whether it’s moral.

Senator Ozouf was again banging the drum by insisting how well-regulated, above board and generally squeaky clean these huge faceless companies are. I don’t doubt him. I have a few friends who have worked in finance both in the UK and Jersey and they say the differences are sometimes huge and that Jersey really is a well-run ship. But is that enough?

For those of us in Jersey who don’t work in the finance industry, I think it’s always been a bit of an uneasy relationship. We are almost like a rich mobster’s wife – we enjoy the lavish lifestyle and the perks that come from swimming in cash, but we don’t really know where the money came from and probably don’t want to know. It might not necessarily be outside of the law, but if it’s a practice that ultimately divests someone or some organisation of their fair share, I’m not sure it’s something to celebrate.

Look at the outrage generated when Jimmy Carr was ‘caught’ depriving the UK government of a healthy wodge of his huge earnings by having squirrelled away his nuts in Jersey. Most people couldn’t care less whether or not he had acted illegally – it was more that the traditionally left-wing comic had acted immorally by turning his back on the country that looked after him, that provided him with health care, education and new roads to drive his sports cars on, by choosing not to pay his way.

Consider the alternative approach taken by multi-millionaire author JK Rowling. In a powerful statement issued a few years ago, the Harry Potter writer explained how she had been offered several ways of paying less tax by financial advisers but that she had made a conscious decision to fork out the full amount to the UK Treasury – mainly because she had relied on the system when she was a struggling single mother and she felt it would be unfair of her not to pay her way now that she was so successful. It was a noble gesture and welcomed as such, but it seems a bit strange that we are at a situation where a person is lauded for paying their fair share.

A key question for Jersey, as Deputy Tadier asked during his heated radio debate with Senator Ozouf, is whether the Island’s finance industry will exist as it is now in 200 years. No one knows.

It could be argued that the vultures are circling. Senator Barack Obama is among many leaders who have warned that they are not going to tolerate the current situation (which includes several other offshore centres as well as Jersey) for much longer – especially while they battle on amid a recession.

And perhaps the reason for Senator Ozouf’s increasingly passionate defence of our current situation is that we don’t have a Plan B. He has no choice but to insist that the current system is sound, hardy and bulletproof because the alternative just doesn’t bear thinking about. If the EU somehow found a way of stopping Jersey from offering some of the financial services it does, the effect would be disastrous for the Island, leaving us devastated both economically and socially. We couldn’t rely on tourism or agriculture, our previous thriving industries, to bail us out, because we are driving at 90 mph down a one-way street with our eyes closed.

We are all enjoying the gravy train (and, honestly, I can’t thank you bankers enough) but it might be prudent for us just to be aware that there might come a time when money doesn’t grow on trees in Jersey any more.

It is the same reason I was always a bit wary of the fulfilment industry in Jersey – another example of how the Island was able to manipulate the system for gain. That entire business was founded on a loophole and was always destined to collapse once the people that were losing income found a way to stop it. Why on earth did we feel that we had a right to undercut everyone else? Imagine if Guernsey found a way of offering tax deals that blew Jersey out of the water – could we honestly complain if we lost all of our business?

Whether it’s tax avoidance or tax evasion is an issue of semantics and one for the lawyers to argue over. But for the Islanders who rely on Jersey’s finance industry for their way of life, both indirectly and directly, we need to have a long, hard think about how our current economy was formed and where it’s going.

We’ve all enjoyed dining at this restaurant for the last 50 years. But who’s going to pay the bill?

This is the first of a number of postings where I will be looking at the serious issues facing Jersey.

First we must look at the Jersey Evening Post (JEP). This paper has been at the heart of "Island Strife" for a very long time. Jersey has only one newspaper. It has unashamedly been the establishment mouth piece for a very long time. In 2008 it came to the rescue of the establishment when it ridiculed the lead investigator DCO Lenny Harper and his teams investigation into decades long child abuse in the Jersey Care System "Operation Rectangle". The Jersey Evening Post simply trashed the child abuse investigation. This paper has played a huge part in denigrating any politician who dares speaks out or goes against the establishment view.

The actions of the JEP and its shocking level of reporting are too vast to name. One of the biggest crimes that can be levelled at it - next to trashing a child abuse investigation - is its abandonment of the people of Jersey. The JEP, along with all of Jersey's "Main Stream Media" outlets, have let the people of Jersey down. Where are the JEP's investigative journalists? Why haven't they broken any big stories that have held our government to account over all these years? They have simply failed. Jersey has been led down the garden path by a small majority of the ruling elite. The JEP could have exposed and nailed the idiots that have done this.

I don't blame the JEP hacks for this. They deliver what their editors ask for. Why write a piece and submit it if you are only going to be told to rewrite it?

The departure of Chris Bright and Rob Shipley is a huge moment in the history of the Jersey Evening Post. One goes this October the other in April 2014. It is a pivotal moment. The paper, like Jersey, has reached its crossroads. The influence of these two editors can't be underestimated. They have been at the JEP since the 70's. The paper is a laughing stock. It doesn't have to be.

Father Time is catching up with the Jersey old guard. Slowly but surely they are moving on. Are these two editors worried about the up coming Committee of Enquiry into child abuse?

Do not forget how the JEP has played a huge role in Jersey's elections. It shows no shame in backing their chancer. In 2011 they went flat out in promoting former Bailiff, Sir Philip Bailhache.

This is my first look at 2014 and beyond. I shared a very informative chat with a Deputy today. His political views are different to mine but yet we shared the same concerns about Jersey's future. I hope to be developing some of the issues we spoke about in later postings. Things must change. The JEP has its chance. I hope that someone from outside of Jersey is given the job. I hope they will come with integrity and ambition. A simple ambition of taking the JEP out of the mire it's been swimming in since 1890? Can this be achieved when it depends on advertising and the States of Jersey for survival? only time will tell.

The Frank Walker and Jon Averty influence has been immense on this so called 'NEWS' paper. Have they been pulling the strings of Shipley and Bright all this time?

Jersey has one newspaper. It has a duty to the people of Jersey. Being the only newspaper on the Island of Jersey must come with responsibility. I have heard that the Guernsey Post is not afraid of breaking the hard story.

Jersey 2014 and beyond

We must be open and honest. This is not about being Left - Right or somewhere in the middle. This is about three things coming together.

This is about the Moral, Social and Financial future of Jersey.

These three things must move forward hand in hand

I believe we are on a precipice. We can be blinkered if we like. The Jersey Media must step up like they have never done so before.